Zepto CEO Defends Indian Startups After Piyush Goyal’s ‘Delivery Boys, Girls’ Remark”

Zepto CEO Defends Indian Startups: Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal's remark on India's startup ecosystem while speaking at the Startup, questioning its focus on food delivery and logistics over deep-tech innovation.

Should we aspire to be, or are we going to be happy being delivery boys and girls?” he said while comparing the startup landscapes between India and China. His remarks prompted entrepreneurs across India to share varied reactions, including the latest one from Zepto CEO Aadit Palicha. In an X post, he claimed that his company, which he also co-founded, has created almost 1.5 Lakh jobs and generated nearly “ ₹1,000+ Crores of tax contribution to the government per year.”

“It is easy to criticise consumer internet startups in India, especially when you compare them to the deep technical excellence being built in US/China. Using our example, the reality is this: there are almost 1.5 Lakh real people who are earning livelihoods on Zepto today - a company that did not exist 3.5 years ago. ₹1,000+ Crores of tax contribution to the government per year, over a billion dollars of FDI brought into the country and hundreds of crores invested in organising India's backend supply chains (especially for fresh fruits and vegetables),” Aadit Palicha wrote in the first few lines of his X post. He added that if this progress “isn't a miracle in Indian innovation” then he doesn’t know what is.

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He then asked, “Why doesn't India have its own large-scale foundational AI model? It's because we still haven't built great internet companies.” He referenced companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Alibaba, adding that all these “big players in AI” started as “consumer internet companies.”

“Consumer internet companies drive this innovation because they have the best data, talent, and capital to put behind it,” he continued.

“The startup ecosystem, the government, and the owners of large pools of Indian capital need to actively support the creation of these local champions, not pull down the teams that are trying hard to get there,” he added.

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Palicha confessed that Zepto is not yet a “great Internet company,” but it is trying hard to become one. He added that he is dedicating the next few decades of his life to creating "dynamism in the Indian economy.” He concluded his post by saying that India has both talent and capital, but it needs “execution.”

The union minister emphasised the difficulties facing the startup industry in his remarks at Startup Mahakumbh. According to him, a lot of Indian entrepreneurs are concentrating on fast logistics and food delivery apps rather than other industries.

“What are India’s startups of today? We are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house,” he said. The minister added, “We are very proud of what India has done, but are we the best in the world as yet? Not yet.”

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